Oct 20

 Bad night. Twitches were on high. Legs were jumpy, the restless leg syndrome kicking in. But the other spasms and twitches were doing a number too. This is part of my smorgasbord of bullshit. I now twitch. Sometimes in my sleep - pulling me out of it. Last night I managed to have some kind of throat twitch - which is new. Woke me up entirely. I tried to work out exactly what I had done. But. Sometimes it's impossible to replicate the twitch. A sure sign if you needed one that this wasn't a conscious control thing.

Rats gnawing on the wires perhaps.

Therapy day today.

I went to it possibly the lowest I have been. But not tearful. Just. Bottomed out. Still swirling around the reality of suicide.

After 40 minutes with the shrink, the shrink paused and a silence grew.

So.

The shrink said and paused again.

How worried should I be about you ?

Not worried at all I said and smiled.

The shrink just looked at me.

I'll be fine I said. I am ok. No smile this time. A grimace.

You don't sound fine said the shrink. You've just been relating for the last 40 minutes how not fine you are.

I am fine I said quietly.

Don't put me in the nut house. If you do that, I think that will be a tipping point. I will see that as an end game.

I don't think you need the nut house said the shrink - whatever you mean by that. 

I'm fine I said.

Not all things are solvable. Not all things have happy ends. Drift into the meta level a bit. Be zen. Some you win. Some you lose. It doesn't matter. Just be zen.

I closed my eyes and mimiced a zen stance.

This week I brought up progress. Whether the shrink thought we were making any. Typically the shrink just turned it around. What does it mean to you. I growled. I knew you would be coy. I explained my thinking - that it felt like they had changed gear with me. Where they were impatient before they were now patient. It felt like they had changed approach, thrown a lot of their learning out the window and had settled in for just being quiet, walking with me through my space, and acknowledging me when in pain.

The shrink thought we were making progress. Perhaps not the progress I expected. Or wanted. But progress. But the shrink wanted to know what I thought. It seems like you don't think there is progress.

No I said. I didn't offer a judgement. It's actually complicated and not a simple single answer. I paused. The shrink wanted to get into it. Ok.

On the bigger picture. I think we are making no progress at all. I am. Still as I am. On the smaller picture. Most of the time I feel better walking out of here. It is. Helpful. In a very tiny way. So small. But. I said not to be disheartened by that. Because everything else was a negative. So to have a positive - even a small one - was quite the thing. We talked about just how talking can help. I am aware it does. Even though I am still at a bit of a loss as to how that mechanism works. Or why it works. But it does work.

The shrink said that was good. And part of it.

We talked about the nuts and bolts of my suffering. How close I came to suicide again last week. We went through it in detail. How I felt. I backtracked and layered in my other brushes with suicide. How they were all different. But were the same tune. The shrink once again gave their opinion that I was often going through periods of intense emotion that then crashed out. Like an overload they said. And then it would come back on. This was my description. That weird flick on, flick off. Almost very much like blowing a fuse. I am topping out my biochemical emotional response. So intense. That it desensitises for a moment perhaps. Too much goop. Overloaded receptors. The plug is pulled. A beat of 10 seconds. Clears. The lights come back on. Emotions to 10. Rinse and repeat.

I said that my illness pulls me back down into hopelessness, whether I want it or not. It's not just a mental battle. Even when I am looking for mental relief, to do something better for my mental well being, more often that not my physical health wades in, knocks me sideways, and smashes any such attempt out of my hands.

It makes coping with it. Difficult. End times difficult. Impossible.

A cool calm decision just to end it all. Logically. All the ducks are in a row. It makes sense. It makes no sense to keep enduring that.

It sounds like your rational side has stepped in and found a solution they said. To end it. The calm, cool, detached solution, just to finish it. Yeah I said. Something like that. It isn't just a pit of misery thing. There is a strong rational aspect to it.

Perhaps you're wrong about that solution the shrink said.

Sure I said. If you have the answer. Then go for it. Knock it out of the park. But I am pretty sure there is no answer.

There is nothing I can say said the shrink, that is going to alter that position. You have it all figured out cognitively. It is locked down, rational, logical, I am not going to be able to do anything.

Sure I said.

It seems to me that what you're struggling with is the emotion of it. And that the answer is maybe in the emotion, and not any kind of rational answer.

Maybe I said. I often say the two are different languages. One is French. One is German. They do not speak each others language.

My old GP from very long ago always used to say you can't outthink an emotion. 

I said look at the US. People try to appeal to others sense of rationality, logic. Completely missing the point that they don't think like that. They think in emotion. Belief. And they shout at each other, failing to get through. 

So sure. Emotion and intellect are different houses.

But that being said.

The shrink offered no solution to an emotional problem either.

I questioned out loud. What the shrink saw of me. I wondered. What they saw. A textbook this. A broken that. A dysfunctional this. I said I knew them to be caring and would avoid any negative labels like broken. The caring side of them would not allow that kind of branding. I would absolutely never say that, I said mimicing their voice. But I said. I wondered if deeper down that wouldn't get expressed. Whether they thought I was broken. Or what they saw.

The shrink paused. And said. I see someone in a lot of pain.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Like a dog shaking off water. A wave of emotion peaked and fell over me. I grappled with it and smoothed it out, the shaking and closure to the world my way of wrestling with that control.

Yes. I said quietly when it has subsided a little. And opened my eyes. 

The shrink looked at me sadly.

We also touched on this week Our Relationship. I am connecting with them. They are connecting with me. At a deeper level. But it is weird. Unnatural. It has boundaries. We talked about it. The paradox of it. Both closer and yet boundaried. I said I had not experienced that kind of relationship before. It isn't one you're likely to encounter the shrink said. So. That makes sense.

Hmm.

At the very final minutes. We touched on being "good at things" being a curse. As much as being "good at things" has been done to death with how its a boon. I said the less talked about bit, is how its a curse. Everyone needs you to do your thing. Regardless. Always. Relentlessly.

I have decided not to stop the therapy. We will continue.

But this week we nudged a little closer.

I am not entirely sure what to make of it. I *trust* them. And yet I don't know them. But then again. I do know them. On some. Narrow intellectual plane. I don't know what they like to eat. But I do know how they think. Where their values lie. What their character is. Even if they are at pains to hide it. I don't know the half of them. Hidden. Behind the boundaries.

I appreciate their intellectual maturity. They are the most mature person I have ever met. Their ego is very small and very quiet. And they are open minded. Very unusual.